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It’s been a significant year for criminal justice in the Bay Area, but many of the challenges have come late in the year.

In October, Oakland lost Police Chief Anthony Batts, who resigned saying he couldn’t work in the current political climate. Days later, Oakland’s police department plunged into scandal after a raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment turned violent. Meanwhile, the state had its own share of controversy, as it planned to shift responsibility for thousands of inmates to the local level, what’s known as realignment. KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta joined Holly Kernan to discuss what we can expect over the next year from the local and state criminal justice system.

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HOLLY KERNAN: Alight Rina, let’s start with the local. It was a tumultuous year for Oakland. We lost a police chief, and then we saw repeated clashes between police and protestors, and now we have a petition to recall the mayor based largely on public safety issues. So how is this going to work itself out in 2012?

RINA PALTA: The first thing they’re going to have to deal with right off the bat is the federal district court. They’re going to be called in in January to account for all the issues that the police departments had over the years. And Judge Thelton Henderson is really looking to see if Oakland is able to meet its requirements under its settlement agreement. And they haven’t been able to do that so far. He’s kind of given them January as a last deadline to make things work, and he’ll undoubtedly be looking at what happened at the end of this year with Occupy Oakland, with crowd control. And I’m not sure he’s going to like what he sees.

KERNAN: And the context of this is going back to the Riders’ case?

PALTA: Right, exactly. There were some issues that were resolved between people who were bringing these accusations against the police department, and the police department itself. They agreed to basically change the way they handle crowd control, change the way they interview suspects, change the way they deal with firearms, and the district court basically said they don’t have enough progress on this issue.

KERNAN: And so what happens?

PALTA: So if they can’t display that they’ve come up to code basically by January, the judge has threatened to put them under federal supervision, direct federal supervision, which means having a receiver in charge of the department, not the police chief, not the city. And he’s threatened to do this. It’s unclear if he’ll actually follow through on that. But that’s what they’ll be talking about in January.

KERNAN: And in 2012 Oakland will certainly choose a new police chief, since former Chief Anthony Batts left in October.

PALTA: Right, so we’ll see who is mayor in 2012, if the current mayor Jean Quan can stave off this recall petition. It sounds like the people who are bringing this recall petition are people who did not like her from the beginning. I’m not sure how much support there is in her group of former supporters for recalling her. But undoubtedly, whoever is the mayor will pick whoever is police chief.

I just started talking to the mayor’s office yesterday, and they’re going to stick with Howard Jordan, who is the current interim chief indefinitely. They can do that indefinitely. They don’t have to appoint a new police chief. It’s not clear what his relationship is with Mayor Quan at this point. It’s probably not great. But they will stick with him for the foreseeable future.

KERNAN: So let’s talk about the situation at the state level where there are a lot of things going on right now. Primarily, obviously, a massive economic crisis that’s resulting in cuts to education, mental health care, and a lot of social programs. How is the budgetary system going to play out in the criminal justice arena?

PALTA: Well, there’s a lot of hope that this budgetary crisis will bring criminal justice reform in a state that’s ramping up its criminal justice system in the past few decades.

KERNAN: You mean incarcerating more people, building more prisons?

PALTA: Incarcerating more people, building more prisons, tougher sentences, people in jail for longer. And so Sacramento insiders are really saying now this is a window for change. This budget crisis is a window for change.

I spoke with Sasha Abramsky, who has covered California politics for decades. And here’s what he had to say about now being the time for reform:

SASHA ABRAMSKY: Well, there certainly is a window at the moment. People have talked about the moral inequity of a law like Three Strikes, and the arbitrary nature of these laws. A lot of people have looked at the racially disproportionate impact of many criminal justice policies. But it hasn’t generally gained a lot of traction. But you know, there’s been a willingness to give legislators the benefit of the doubt on criminal justice policies.

And now what’s happening is people are no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt. Not because there’s been a moral sea change – it’s because there’s been a financial sea change. There just isn’t the money in the system anymore. So people are looking at a bankrupted, or near bankrupted California. They’re looking at the cost of the prison system, which is about $10 billion a year.

KERNAN: Rina, how big is that window, so to speak?

PALTA: Well, one thing we talked about is the fact that this window will only involve things that involve money. So there’s going to be a lot of ballot initiatives on the ballot in 2012, probably one to end the death penalty, probably one to reform three strikes. And he predicts these ballot initiatives will be successful only to the point that people can see them as fiscal issues, not moral issues. So with the death penalty, that’s probably really tough. It’s not a big money suck. It is expensive, but it’s not on the $10 billion range that the whole prison system is.

You know, the other big issues that’s going to have a lot of impact in 2012 is how we elect our legislators is going to change a lot. Some people call it an open primary – it’s not really an open primary, but what will happen in 2012 is Proposition 14 will go into effect. That means that primaries will involve all kinds of people and the top two vote-getters from the primary will go on to compete in the general election for Assembly and for State Senate. So it could be two Democrats competing in the final election; it could be two Republicans. But the idea is probably we’ll find more moderates at the state level. And so we’ll see how that will play out in criminal justice, how it will play out in the budget, and how lobbyists will deal with this new situation at the state level.

KERNAN: The other big issue on a state level is what’s called realignment, which is counties have more responsibility for inmates. They’re not sending as many inmates to state prison. So what are people watching to see if realignment is successful?

PALTA: Sure, we’ll obviously be looking at the crime levels and whether or not those go up post-realignment. We’ll also be looking to see what each county does with the money it’s been given from the state to deal with these inmates. So there’s some problems already.

We’re hearing about some counties not putting people in jail for violating their parole so there’s no consequences for violating your parole. We’re hearing about a lot of counties that are just going to take a lot of state money and build new jails instead of putting it into rehabilitation.

So there’s all kinds of things happening all over the state, and we’re going to be watching to see what the final consequence is, if recidivism rates go down. If incarceration rates go up at the local level, there’s a lot of different things that could happen.

This is what Sasha Abramsky had to say about realignment.

ABRAMSKY: If it’s done well, it will be an exercise in creative thinking at its best. It will shrink a bloated system. It will result in a more accountable system. It might result in a low recidivism rates. It might result in better drug treatments. If it’s done badly, just as a cost-cutting maneuver, then we’re going to a whole bunch of people essentially left out on the sidelines. And that comes with a host of problems. We saw that with the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill a generation ago. The money didn’t accompany it, and it resulted in a series of rolling problems and disasters. So we have to look at where the money goes in the realignment process.

KERNAN: Looks like we will be hearing a lot more from Rina about criminal justice reform and realignment. So we’ll check in with you again soon. Thanks, Rina.

HOLLY KERNAN You’ve been back and forth on whether the camp could stay in the plaza. Why did you decide to evict the protesters today?

MAYOR JEAN QUAN: I’m not sure if I’ve been back and forth. And when we started the demonstrations, I said it would be on a day-to-day basis. That was about a month ago and then it was clear pretty much by the end of the first week and the beginning of the second week that every day there was more violence there were sexual assaults, A person was hit over the head with a two-by-four to control them.

The encampment really seemed to lose the focus of the movement and everything became about the encampment and not about the 99% or organizing, and that’s when as a part of our leadership team, the city agreed that we had to close the camp before someone was hurt even more seriously.

And then, unfortunately, at the demonstrations, it was clear that people were not clear on why the camp was closed. We’ve taken this time over the last two weeks to really talk to the community about the impact of the camp. The fact that it’s not questioned at all… It was a question of safety, and the murder last Thursday sort of underscored that.

The second thing is the impact on the City of Oakland and particularly in the downtown area. I don’t know how long you’ve been in the Bay Area but after Loma Prieta, downtown was like a ghost town. It took us a long time to build up. Now there a lot of thriving small businesses, immigrant businesses, restaurants, [and] office buildings are starting to fill up again, and we were finding that the impact was pretty devastating.

I tell people I am a restaurant brat; I grew up a Chinese American so I’ve had a lot of occupations, and my family as immigrants have a lot of small businesses, in particular restaurants, and the restaurants even as far away as Chinatown are telling their staff that patronage has gone down about 50%. And I know being someone who grew up in a family – and the example I give is that we would never even close for Christmas until I was about five because we couldn’t afford to lose a single day to keep our business going – and so a lot of small businesses have been really, really hurt.

The third thing is that the services for the city have really been reduced because of budget cuts. I cut $30 million this year to balance the budget. We laid off hundreds of people and Occupy was really draining the resources of maintenance workers, the police. There was one demonstration where almost 100 calls went unanswered because the cops were tied up downtown.

And so it’s not just one reason – it’s many reasons. And it’s something that I think now more Oaklanders understand and more Oaklanders are dividing the issues of supporting Occupy Oakland’s goals from the encampment.

I was on a conference call with big city mayors and of the 18 of us, we were having the same problem where the people who started the camps were no longer in control, and that they’ve become a big drain and have become very dangerous places.

KERNAN: And you talked a little bit about the cost to the city. A lot of people are criticizing the October 25th police response as overly-aggressive and something that is likely to bring lawsuits upon the city. What your response to that?

QUAN: You know I said “in the beginning,” since I wasn’t here when most of the violence happened, that we would have an independent review. And I hope to be able to announce the person who will do that review this week.

We’re not happy. I started as a council member during the Iraq War and helped formulate the guidelines for demonstrations, and we want our rules to be filled, but I think it’s a lot like the demonstrations… Most the people of the demonstrations are non-violent and believe in good goals, and the small percentage have created the problems like the violence and the vandalism.

I think that’s the same with our police. Most of our police officers have tried to keep the peace and there may have been some instances for a few officers, but we really need to move forward together.

KERNAN: And you’re being criticized on many sides for how you’ve dealt with this occupation. Your advisor Dan Seigel resigned today. How are you dealing with the political fallout and the recall?

QUAN: Well you know I haven’t had enough time to deal with the recall. The reality is that this is a pretty troubling time in the history and the city has to decide whether or not these kind of movements are going to be non-violent or not, and I’ve really been focusing on that.

Dan and I have known each other since we were at Berkeley. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. I want to thank him for the work he’s done, and he’s moving on and I’m moving on ‘cause today I’m just going to do a regular meeting focused on getting new jobs here. I’m trying to change our community policing and working with the schools, and I’m just moving on too.

KERNAN: And you said that you support the Occupy movement. What does that mean for you?

QUAN: I think that the movement across the country means a lot of things for a lot of people, but for me it means that we really focus on the distribution of resources in a more fair way. So locally, that comes down to making sure that families get a chance to save their homes on cases of foreclosures. It means that we try to make sure that people have opportunity for jobs, that we try to make sure that people work really hard to get the benefit of decent services.

The way I’ve been particularly leaning on this issue is that I’ve been trying to focus on the 100 blocks in Oakland that have had the most violence. If you followed this year when I became mayor, murders were spiking in the city and I was able to start to bring those down in the summer where we were able to put in more officers because the police union started contributing to its fund. We were able to bring back over 30 officers. We were able to bring back more officers in those neighborhoods with the most violence and were able to bring down some of the violence.

And now I want to add on to that more resources for kids such as mentors, parent training, more resources for those schools, more after school programs, more programs to keep kids in school. I think when you deal with helping Oakland [you] will have to deal with giving young people an opportunity for a decent education and to have real hope.

KERNAN: And even before Occupy Oakland movement moved into Frank Ogawa Plaza you had a bit of a strange relationship with the Oakland police department. This seems to have made it even more acute. How are you dealing with trying to repair that?

QUAN: Yeah it’s true I was not their candidate. And first of all I brought back many officers that were laid off and I worked on the issues that they cared about. When I went to a majority of the police lineups I heard in the rank and file that there was three things they wanted: They wanted more police officers, they wanted better radios – and we worked on that, in fact we heard few complaints about that recently – and they want laptops and other equipment. So I’ve really been trying to work on their priorities.

I’ve also been trying to work on different relationships. I’ve been asking them to get out of their cars and walk in neighborhoods, and now on this 100-block project with the new federal grant, we’re going to have 25 officers who are going to be out of their cars, on their street, talking to people on the street, visiting the schools, and making sure that kids get to school safely. And so I want to change the relationship fundamentally with the police department and the community.

KERNAN: And Mayor Quan, when you tried to address the general assembly of the Occupy Oakland movement you were shouted down. What would you like them to hear from you?

QUAN: You know it was interesting that night a very small group surrounded me and shouted out, but the majority of people actually were saying, “Let her speak.” And so what I said that night, and what I continued to say at that point, was I wanted a dialogue.

I’m one of the few mayors that has an Occupy movement that doesn’t have somebody to talk to and you know that resolution’s never gone to the general family to have a group of people that formally represent the movement, to talk and meet with the city.

Recently a group of people who moved out of the camp who said that they want to have a peaceful continuation meeting with the police chief – and that was a good first step.

And I know that they’re gonna try to stabilize their movement by finding a place to be, that they’re looking for a place to rent or a place inside so they can continue their organizing ‘cause they too are tired of just making the movement about whether or not they can be in Frank Ogawa Plaza. It takes so much energy for them to maintain that and keep it safe, and they were not successful. So I know a lot of people who are in the unions and other community groups want to get on with their organizing the movement was launched on

KERNAN: Is there anything else I should ask?

QUAN: Yes, let me just say that I know that not everybody agrees with my decision as mayor. I’ve really had to try to make a decision that I’ve thought through and each step was for the city. Not everyone agrees with it, but I ask people to respect the decision.

But I think now the consensus of the city is that people were tired of the impact of the encampment on downtown and on the rest of the city, and hope that people will be peaceful tonight and that we could work together on issues that unite us and not divide us.

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Kernan also spoke with KALW’s Ali Winston, who has been covering the Occupy movement and was at the camp this morning.

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HOLLY KERNAN: Ali, what happened this morning?

ALI WINSTON: So this morning a group of 400-500 people gathered at the intersection of 14th and Broadway. They’d gotten wind of a police raid by Oakland police and departments from around the region around 4 or 5am. They gathered in this intersection, they pounded on drums, they chanted, they formed a picket line. The police came around 4:45am and formed a loose perimeter, maybe two or three blocks around the encampment. And when they moved in, they set up a line at 14th and Broadway, cutting the demonstrators off from Frank Ogawa Plaza and the camp, the tent city. And they moved in and arrested about 32 people who had remained in the camp and tore the tent city down.

KERNAN: So it was relatively peaceful this morning, this eviction, compared with October 25th?

WINSTON: That’s right. There were no bottles thrown, there was no tear gas fired by the police. There were no less-lethal projectiles fired as there were on October 25th. There were fewer arrests as well. But the real disturbance on October 25th happened during a 4pm re-convergence at the Oakland Public Library where thousands marched on the police station and the plaza as well. And that’s going on right now so it remains to be seen whether this is going south again or not.

KERNAN: And we’ll keep our eye on that and continue to cover it. As sort of a human interest moment, right before the police cleared the camp there was a wedding?

WINSTON: That’s right. Two medics got married, a man named Bakesale and a woman who goes by the name Amanda Hug-a-chicken. They did a wedding by human mic and it was kind of special.

KERNAN: So the big allegation is that the camp had become dangerous and violent. Can you tell me about who was in the camp this morning and whether those allegations are true?

WINSTON: Well the demographic of the camp definitely shifted after the October 25th raid. Prior to that there’d been a lot more organizers, a lot more people who went to the general assembly who were very involved in that. And after the raid, after the camp was set back up again, a lot of the people who stayed overnight were either homeless or dependent on social services for housing, for mental health services. And it really became kind of a triage center for a lot of people who are left out from the social safety net that’s been cut so severely in California and around the U.S.

So the demographic had changed and a lot of the problems that come with dealing with folks with mental health or substance abuse problems came along. The murder of Kayode Foster, the 25-year-old man who was killed last Thursday, actually happened – it was the result of a fight over a marijuana deal that had gone south.

KERNAN: And a lot of people say that that was kind of the last straw for the city.

WINSTON: That’s right. It’s a painfully common story in Oakland about a fistfight between two young men of color ending with a firearm and somebody lying dead on the sidewalk. And the difference is that it happened in the middle of rush hour, dead smack in the middle of the city, and in front of news cameras.

Follow Ali Winston’s coverage of the Occupy movement at our criminal justice blog, The Informant. And KALW is using SoundCloud to collect perspectives on the Occupy movement from Bay Area residents. Tell us what’s happening in your city and what you think about it. You can share it with us using your Android, iPhone, or iPad and the SoundCloud App. Directions are here.

Police raided the Occupy Oakland encampment early this morning. Rubber bullets, flash grenades, and shoves in the face are reportedly what many protesters received as a wake up call..
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